by Roxie Noir
So, after midnight one night, he sent Nathan over, with two other clan members for backup and a .45 in his hand — a gun big enough to stop a grizzly. One guy guarded the Soren’s three kids while Nathan and the other guy told them that they had to leave, now, or their kids would be orphans.
Phil Soren, the father, had challenged him, only to have his nose broken with the butt of a shotgun.
The Sorens left that night, their SUV filled with whatever they could grab in an hour.
Nathan tried not to think about all that stuff, but he’d done it for the clan. They were the only brothers he had left, after all, and wasn’t clan unity the most worthy cause there was?
Still, he couldn’t sleep sometimes. He’d smashed in a man’s face. He’d broken arms and given black eyes before, and after a while it had become just another part of his place as Brock’s right hand man. Brock told him what to do and he did it, because after the first couple, it wasn’t like another bad deed was going to make him a worse person.
He was pretty sure he’d already bottomed out.
Kaitlyn was the only one he still had those perfectly clear nightmares about, though. The other dreams had gotten muddy with time and indifference, but every time he backhanded the fifteen-year-old girl in that cold parking lot, he could see his breath in the Alaska winter air, could hear the fateful crack.
Nathan had never even answered for it. He hadn’t meant any of it, but it happened, and no one else in the clan ever seemed to mind.
She was just some human girl, so who cared?
The Soren house came into view, just on the outskirts of town, so Nathan slowed down and rumbled slowly up the long gravel driveway, trying to keep his engine quiet.
Still, when he pulled up and parked his bike next to the Whitehorses’ van, the front door was already open and Jonah Whitehorse was watching him from the house’s wraparound front porch. Nathan didn’t even have time to run his hands through his hair before the other man was greeting him in his huge, booming voice.
“Nathaniel,” he said.
Immediately, the hairs pricked up along the back of Nathan’s neck. He hated being called Nathaniel. That was what his mother had called him when he was in trouble, usually right before she’d gotten out the belt and given him a good whipping.
Bear parents tended to be strict and old-fashioned, and the Kamchatkas had been no different than most.
“Mr. Whitehorse,” he said, coming up the stairs, remembering that he had to be on his very best behavior. He assumed that this included not shifting and giving the patriarch of the Yukon clan hell for using his full name.
“Welcome,” boomed Jonah, and the two men shook hands.
“It’s Nathan, actually,” he said. As soon as he said it, he could practically feel the chill emanating from Jonah, just for a moment, before the older man renewed his smile.
Nathan couldn’t believe he’d already fucked it up.
Well, another hour or two, he’d have dinner, then be on his way.
“Brock tells me Emily caught your eye at the party yesterday,” he said, his eyes glinting. “I’d be more than happy for you to get to know her during our Leah’s betrothal. I understand arranged marriages aren’t as common here.”
His heart beat a little faster, just at her name.
“As far as I know, this is the first one the North Stars have taken part in,” said Nathan.
Emily, he thought to himself. Try not to forget the name of the girl you’re allegedly here to see.
Jonah frowned, just a little, a hollow just barely forming between his eyes, in his forehead.
“Well, I’m glad you’re coming around to it,” he said. “Arranged marriages are much more stable than those allegedly based on love, you know. Kids fall in love for a month and think they’re ready to spend their lives together. Much better to have cooler heads prevail and decide someone’s fate.”
Nathan blinked and bit his tongue. That went against every fairy tale he’d been told growing up, and it wasn’t at all what the North Star leaders professed. They really pushed the “true mates” thing, practically insisting that every couple who managed to procreate were soulmates. Nathan had never really believed in the concept.
Well. Until he’d locked eyes with Leah.
Jonah walked to the front door and opened it, graciously allowing Nathan through the door first.
It looked different than the last time he’d been in there, but the last time he’d been inside it had been after midnight in the wintertime, and he’d been carrying a handgun big enough to stop a full-grown grizzly.
Now, the wood floors shone in the evening light as Nathan walked into the house, a slight breeze drifting through the open, airy space.
A short woman — short by shifter standards, at least — bustled into the front hallway and held her hands out.
“You must be Nathaniel,” she said, her brown eyes sparkling. She had light brown hair with just a hint of gray, and even though she’d pulled it back curls were popping free all around her face.
“He prefers Nathan,” rumbled Jonah.
“Of course he does,” the woman said. “I’m Margaret, Emily’s mother.”
Nathan still hadn’t been able to remember what Emily looked like, and just hoped that he’d recognize her when he saw her.
Leah’s face, on the other hand, was etched in his memory, and he could see the strong resemblance between her and her mom.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he finally said, berating himself for almost forgetting his manners.
“I’m so glad you’re interested in Emily,” she said, putting a hand very lightly on his arm and pushing him into another light-filled room, this one with blue curtains that matched the blue couches inside it, all three pointing at a big farmhouse fireplace. He had a vague memory of seeing this room on his last trip through the house, looking to his left in the dead of night and seeing nothing more than shapes in the darkness.
Margaret guided him to a couch, then bustled out of the room through a different door. Jonah had just disappeared, apparently, and Nathan was alone in the room with matching curtains and couches.
He had the feeling that whatever was going on was completely normal in the Yukon clan and utterly alien to everyone else.
Having nothing better to do, he looked down and began picking at his fingernails, trying to wipe the memories of the Sorens from his memory. He could still remember the way the youngest child, probably not more than three, had been crying about leaving her favorite stuffed animal behind. It had been a lion named Simon.
Strange the details you remember, thought Nathan. He picked his head up and looked around, trying not to get lost in that dark memory.
Finally, he heard voices.
“You need to come chaperone your sister,” Margaret was saying, using a tone of voice that she obviously thought was very commanding.
“I need to watch the pie,” said another woman’s voice.
Leah’s voice. Nathan’s spine straightened, and his ears strained to hear what she was saying.
“Rebecca will be back in a minute and she can watch the pie. This young man is here for Emily now. Don’t keep him waiting.”
“Mother, she’s not going to do anything inappropriate in the sitting room with a man she’s only just met,” Leah said, sounding exasperated, but also like she’d had this exact argument a thousand times and knew the outcome already.
The way she was right now, this feisty, no-nonsense woman, that was how she’d been with him at the party when she told him not to eat the tarts. Nathan couldn’t lie: it got his blood up, but also didn’t square at all with what he’d been told about her.
“You know the rules,” her mother said firmly. “Go chaperone your sister. I’ll watch the pie until Rebecca gets back.”
“She’ll let it burn. She always does.”
“Leah, I am not having this argument.”
“Fine,” Leah muttered, and then there was the sound of an apron being taken off, q
uick footsteps crossing the floor, and then everything went quiet for a moment.
Nathan tried to lean back a little and not look quite so much like he’d been trying to eavesdrop.
He also hoped, desperately, that Leah was going to wear a paper bag or burlap sack or something, just to hide her soft, luscious, perfect body. If he was supposed to be there for her sister, he had to at least try to keep up the ruse, which probably included not simply drooling over Leah herself.
Just as he was thinking about how easy it would be to remove a burlap sack from her — just whisk it over her head and there she’d be, gloriously nude — he heard steps at the other door, and he turned and stood.
Standing in the doorway was a slight young woman, in a skirt that fell past her knees, with brown eyes and strawberry blond hair. She was blushing hard and looking at the floor, but behind her was Leah.
Leah looked like someone had just slapped her across the face.
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright, her flaming red hair slowly working its way free of the bun she’d pinned it into. She looked shocked to see Nathan standing in front of her.
Then her forehead furrowed, just a tiny bit.
She looked shocked and angry. Nathan’s stomach sank, and he saw Leah’s hand push Emily just a little, in the small of her back.
The girl stepped forward awkwardly, finally looking up to meet Nathan’s eyes.
“I’m Emily,” she said, her small white hands twisting together in front of her.
She looks like a child, Nathan thought. How could Brock think this is a good idea?
“I’m Nathan,” he said. He had no idea at all how to proceed.
Most of Nathan’s romantic experience was in bars, with women five or ten years Emily’s senior. Women who’d already been around the block a couple of times, the sort who’d have a drink and then jump into bed with a tall, handsome stranger and never even get his phone number.
That was what he knew how to do, not this. He had no idea how to pretend to be interested in this girl who was only twenty, practically still a child, when the person he really wanted was right behind her, glaring at him.
One more time, he let his gaze drift over to Leah for just a moment, a small glowing ball of heat growing inside him. She was wearing another dress, a short-sleeved one that was a little baggy and went past her knees, and it would have been frumpy on anyone else. But on Leah, it only made Nathan hunger for what he couldn’t see: the curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts.
Both women seemed to simply be watching him, waiting for him to make a move.
“Want to come sit down?” he asked, trying to look at Emily and not Leah. After all, this was supposed to be her show.
“Thanks,” Emily nearly whispered, and walked to the middle couch. Nathan sat on the couch to her left and Leah on the couch to her right, so they were facing each other.
Perfect, thought Nathan. I’m on a date with a twenty-year-old, I can’t stop thinking about her sister, and I’m not even sitting on the same couch as either of them.
I’m giving Brock a piece of my mind when I see him again.
8
Leah
Leah kept her hands carefully folded in her lap as she watched Nathan try to make conversation with poor Emily. Years and years of training from her parents kept her still and quiet, even as inside, she was screaming and shaking.
She couldn’t believe the way she felt around him. Not that she had very much experience at all with men outside her family, but this was insane. Whenever he made eye contact, her insides went gooey, and it felt like a ball of hot magma was sliding down the inside of her body, from her stomach all the way down to the spot between her legs.
Not that he was looking at her very much. He seemed to be pointedly avoiding it, actually, and that made it even worse — he made her feel like this, shaky and nervous and sweaty, and he barely seemed to notice that she was in the same room.
If I’d known it was going to be him, Leah thought to herself, I’d have argued more with mother.
As it was, she wanted to let her hair down, cross the room, and throw herself on him, and he didn’t seem to notice that she existed.
That’s well enough, she told herself. You’re betrothed, remember? To Ian, your soulmate?
Even the thought felt sour and stale.
“Um, I really like embroidery,” Emily was saying in her quietest, meekest voice. “Sometimes I do custom pieces for the women in town, but there isn’t very much demand.”
“Embroidery is sewing, right?” asked Nathan, his eyes practically boring into Leah’s little sister.
Emily just nodded, her eyes nervously flicking from Nathan to the floor and back.
“What kind of things do you embroider?” he asked her.
“Pillows, sometimes? Wall hangings.”
There was a long silence as both of them seemed to try and think of something to say. Nathan had been trying valiantly to make conversation, but he looked like he was plumb out of leads, and poor, chronically shy Emily was clearly terrified that this enormous, handsome man in a leather jacket was interested in her.
“She did all the edging in my trousseau,” Leah offered.
Nathan barely glanced at her before looking back at Emily, like he was deliberately trying to pretend she wasn’t there.
“What’s a trousseau?” he asked, refusing to make eye contact with Leah.
He won’t even look at me, she thought. Her heart sank.
“The marital bed linens,” Leah said. She’d forgotten for a moment how different their clans were. “In our clan, women usually make all the sheets and pillowcases and covers for their marital bed.” She shrugged. “It’s sort of a preparation for marriage, I guess.”
“Leah has a really big trousseau,” Emily offered in her soft little voice, seemingly relieved that the conversation was no longer about her.
Thanks, kid, Leah thought, though she couldn’t be mad at her little sister. Make me sound like the batty old spinster I am.
Maybe thirty-two wasn’t that old to be unmarried in some places, but among the Yukon clan, it was practically ancient. If you weren’t married by twenty-four, people started looking at you funny.
“I’ve been working on it for a while,” she said, trying not to sound bitter. She didn’t want to sound that way in front of this perfectly gorgeous man, the one who made her feel so funny, even if he was there for her kid sister and refused to make eye contact.
Leah’s other sister, Abigail, appeared in the doorway.
“It’s dinner time,” she said.
Leah thought she might pass out from relief.
Even though the house where they were staying had come furnished, its dining room table wasn’t nearly big enough for all eleven of them. When you had seven siblings, it was rare that anything was big enough: houses, cars or bank accounts.
They’d found two folding tables somewhere in the house and set them up next to the main table, making it all one long, if slightly shaky, eating surface.
Then, her father spent most of the meal grilling Nathan about himself, no one else really saying anything. Leah sat far on the other end of the table from Nathan so she wouldn’t have to notice him avoid her eyes.
“Tell me what kind of carpentry you do,” boomed Jonah, his voice commanding even as he, in theory, made polite conversation.
“A little bit of everything, actually,” said Nathan. He’d finally taken off his jacket at her mother’s insistence, and underneath he was wearing a blue-and-white plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal heavily muscled forearms, a tattoo of a bear outline with a constellation in on one.
Leah was discovering that she liked a man with nice forearms. Even though she had to lean pretty far forward to see Nathan’s face with four of her siblings in the way, she could see the way his hands moved a little as he talked, the way he gripped his fork as he ate her mother’s pot roast.
Even that made the heat rise to her face, and she hoped
no one noticed.
“Your alpha said that right now you’re working on a kitchen remodel.”
Nathan’s hand twitched a little, the muscles in his forearm flexing.
“I’m finishing up the cabinets this week,” he answered. “They should be done before too long. I also do a lot of custom furniture.”
“You make a good living?”
There was that twitch, again. Leah knew that he probably wasn’t used to quite this level of nosiness on a first date, if this was even a date. Emily hadn’t said a word since the meal had started, but her father had already inquired after the purity of Nathan’s bloodline, Nathan’s place in his clan, and his older brother’s abandonment of the North Star pack.
She was pretty sure this wasn’t how most people dated.
It was more or less how I dated, though, she thought, and then remembered Ian’s face with a guilty rush.
He’s my fiancé, she reminded herself. Stop looking at this other man already.
Although she hadn’t heard or read any of her father’s and Ian’s communication, she was certain the exact same questions had been asked. Of course, she hadn’t been invited to take part until the very end, so at least Emily was getting to know her suitor a little better than Leah had.
Ian’s your soulmate and you love him, she reminded herself automatically.
God, she wanted that to be true.
Her sister Abigail nudged her elbow, and the two of them rose, collecting the dirty plates from the rest of the table, something that had been women’s work since Leah had been tall enough to reach. She did it automatically, not realizing until it was too late that she’d be the one taking Nathan’s plate away.
As she reached over him, her arm grazed his.
There was that feeling again, the electricity that sent shivers down her spine.
Then Nathan jerked away without even looking at her, responding to something else her father had said.
Leah rushed to the kitchen, fighting back tears.
What is wrong with me? She thought, dumping the dishes in the sink.
